Creating structures to include young people's opinions and advice has been recognized as important for high-quality youth programs and services. Recent scholarship has begun to learn that most of these efforts are often symbolic rather than substantive. While continually advocated for, the practice is not widespread or well done. Using data…

Partnership as an ordinary, everyday way of doing business within Saint Paul Parks and Recreation (P&R) has often been limited to working with individuals, groups, or agencies through a contract, generally to provide fee-based programs or services. This approach does not encourage new ways of thinking about or working with other organizations…

An ongoing, innovative youth worker professional development is described in this article. This initiative began as youth worker professional development and then transcended to personal and organizational development. It grew from a moral response of Saint Paul Parks and Recreation staff and two faculty members of Youth Studies, University of…

Organizational development is based in part on knowledge development, both formal, scientifically proven and also nonscientific practice wisdom. This article brings together all of the lessons learned over our six years of work with Saint Paul Parks and Recreation, and suggests the practice utility of these.

This conclusion to the volume presents a dialogue from the perspective of educator and clinician. With examples from professional development and practice, the discussion revolves around teacher training and the role of the administrator in creating a bounded and safe environment in which teachers can develop healthy relationships. It discusses…

In data derived from student interviews, students describe how they see teacher-student relationships function for them in their experience of school, their personal development, and their academic success. These relationships are central to students' ability to feel connected at school and to their emerging identities. Students describe how…

Because schools rarely provide guidelines for teachers that outline how they should conduct personal relationships with students, teachers must wrestle individually with how to establish, communicate, and maintain clear boundaries in their interactions. As schools work to become more personal environments, school administrators will need to help…

Teachers find that having close personal relationships with students is deeply rewarding in their work and that they contribute to more effective classrooms. The relationships, which many consider to be part and parcel of good teaching, afford teachers the opportunity to reach students intellectually and emotionally. Still, the relationships can…

This article addresses the fact that student-teacher relationships uncover many clinical issues, such as trauma. It looks at statistics of how prevalent mental health disorders and problems are and then shows that no teacher can handle all of the kinds of problems that will emerge in open relationships with the students. They need to do this work…

A substantial percentage of students come to school with a number of stress factors from life circumstances, personal clinical attributes, and typical adolescent challenges. As a result, some students become disengaged from school, are unsuccessful, or drop out of school. School structures are not always equipped to respond to such problems. A…

This article describes activities that can be used with multiple audiences of teachers, administrators, or other caregivers regarding setting boundaries in personal relationships with students. First, participants must think about and discuss relationships that they experienced with their own teachers in the past and determine what aspects of…

This article examines the kinds of relationships that nonteacher educators, especially youth development practitioners working in after-school settings, have with students. It addresses the fact that these adults in schools have an explicit youth-oriented and relational approach, find out many productive and anxiety-provoking facts about their…

This chapter reviews recent research on bullying from an educator's perspective. It is well known that bullying, a serious issue in schools, can be prevented when educators intervene. But research has shown that it is difficult for educators to detect bullying situations in their school and intervene competently and effectively. This chapter…

This chapter presents the results from two systematic/meta-analytic reviews of longitudinal studies on the association of school bullying (perpetration and victimization) with adverse health and criminal outcomes later in life. Significant associations between the two predictors and the outcomes are found even after controlling for other major…

The KiVa antibullying program has been widely implemented in Finnish comprehensive schools since 2009. The program is predicated on the idea that a positive change in the behaviors of classmates can reduce the rewards gained by the perpetrators of bullying and consequently their motivation to bully in the first place. KiVa involves both universal…